About this item

Airships and electric submarines, automatons and mesmerists? Welcome to the wild world of steampunk. It is all speculative? Or is it? Meet the intrepid souls who pushed Victorian technology to its limits and paved the way for our present age.The gear turns, the whistle blows, and the billows expand with electro-mechanical whirring. The shimmering halo of Victorian technology lures us with the stuff of dreams, of nostalgia, of alternate pasts and futures that entice with the suave of James Bond and the savvy of Sherlock Holmes. Fiction, surely. But what if the unusual gadgetry so often depicted as "steampunk" actually made an appearance in history? Zeppelins and steam-trains; arc-lights and magnetic rays: these fascinating (and sometimes doomed) inventions bounded from the tireless minds of unlikely heroes. Such men and women served no secret societies and fought no super-villains, but they did build engines, craft automatons, and engineer a future they hoped would run like clockwork. Along the way, however, these same inventors ushered in a contest between desire and dread. From Newton to Tesla, from candle and clockwork to the age of electricity and manufactured power, technology teetered between the bright dials of fantastic futures and the dark alleyways of industrial catastrophe. In the mesmerizing Clockwork Futures, Brandy Schillace reveals the science behind steampunk, which is every bit as extraordinary as what we might find in the work of Jules Verne, and sometimes, just as fearful. These stories spring from the scientific framework we have inherited. They shed light on how we pursue science, and how we grapple with our destiny - yesterday, today, and tomorrow.



About the Author

Brandy Schillace

Historian and author Brandy Schillace writes about intersections of medicine, history, and literature. And steampunk. And vampires. (Let's not forget vampires.) Brandy works as Research Associate and Public Engagement Fellow for the Dittrick Museum of Medical History and Managing Editor of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. Her most recent non-fiction work, DEATH'S SUMMER COAT (E&T UK, Pegasus US) , explores cultural approaches to death and dying. Fiction includes short stories and the Jacob Maresbeth Chronicles (Coop Press) about a teen with a blood disorder and his struggle to be "normal" (or at the very least, *not* to be burned at the stake) . Brandy's current book project explores the science behind steampunk--that clockwork genre of gadgets and gizmos (and Victorian debonair) . You can find the TEDx talk at http://www.tedxcle.com/brandy-shillace/ --or visit her blog, the Fiction Reboot | Daily Dose. Brandy also writers for Huffington Post, InsideHigherEd, H-net, and the Centre for Medical Humanities. She has been an invited lecturer for the Health Sciences Library of University at Buffalo, University College of Dublin, Manchester University, and the New York Academy of Medicine, and she gives talks more locally at PechaKucha Cleveland, the Dittrick Museum and Cleveland Clinic. When she isn't researching automatons, writing fiction, taking over the world (or herding cats) she teaches as a SAGES fellow for Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Schillace is represented by Jessica Papin at Dystel and Goderich Literary Management.http://brandyschillace.com/http://fictionreboot-dailydose.com/@bschillace



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